"I think I'm softening him, George. I found out what it was that got his goat three years ago."
"Yeah?"
"Sure. On Ceres, where he went three years ago, he was treated as if he weren't as good as a Belt man."
Alhamid frowned. "Someone was disrespectful?"
"No—that is, not exactly. But he was treated as if we didn't trust his judgment, as though we were a little bit afraid of him."
"Oh-ho! I see what you mean."
"Sure. We treated him just as we would anyone who hasn't proved himself. And that meant we were treating him the same way we treated our own 'lower classes', as he thought of them. I had Governor Holger get his Ceres detectives to trace down everything that happened. You can read the transcript if you want. There's nothing particularly exciting in it, but you can see the pattern if you know what to look for.
"I'm not even certain it was fully conscious on his part; I'm not sure he knew why he disliked us. All he was convinced of was that we were arrogant and thought we were better than he is. It's kind of hard for us to see that a person would be that deeply hurt by seeing the plain truth that someone else is obviously better at something than he is, but you've got to remember that an Earthman is brought up to believe that every person is just exactly as good as every other—and no better. A man may have a skill that you don't have, but that doesn't make him superior—oh, my, no!
"Anyway, I started out by apologizing for our habit of standing up all the time. I managed to plant the idea in his mind that the only thing that made him think we felt superior was that habit. I've even got him to the point where he's standing up all the time, too. Makes him feel very superior. He's learned the native customs."
"I get you," Alhamid said. "I probably contributed to that inferiority feeling of his myself."